Sass certainly had a wonderful temperament for showing.
She’d strut out and do her thing, make friends with the judge and run around
with me. There was just one problem if she made it through to the next round of
judging. In her mind she had done her thing, won a ribbon that said “Best of
Breed” and it was time to go home not go through the whole thing again.
I’d lead her out, do the required circle with the other dogs
and stand in ‘show pose’ while the judge sent each dog for it’s up and back and
look it over again. This part of the judging was for ‘Group’, in our case judging
the best working dog on the day.
The breeds were judged alphabetically so being a Belgian Shepherd
we were not too far down the row. The judge would get to Sass, we’d do our up
and back and stand while the judge took another look at her before passing onto
the next dog.
So far so good. The judge went through the procedure with all
the other dogs then proceeded to walk up and down the row of dogs, occasionally
asking one or two to do another up and back while he/she made their decision.
This is when my dear girl got bored. After the judge had
finished with her she would stand there staring at me with one leg stuck out to
the side. It reminded me of an impatient person with one hand on their hips and
leg out to one side.
Needless to say we rarely got a Group award but she finally
got enough points to be called an Australian Champion.
It didn’t matter. We were having fun and exercise and got to
know other Belgian Shepherd people which gave us an opportunity to learn about
our breed.
When Sass was about 12 months old we were offered a male Belgian
a little over 3 month old Shepherd. We were told he had already started show
training and had a lot of promise. Because we were enjoying showing and had
come to love the breed generally we made arrangements to meet the puppy.
 |
| How could anyone not fall in love with this lovely boy |
When we got to the breeder’s house we were greeted by the
cutest bundle of black fluff you could imagine. We got to spend plenty of time
with him and the breeder took us through what he had learnt in relation to both
house and show training. There was no way I was going home without that
beautiful boy aptly named Beau.
More about Beau next time.
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